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Concreteblock farming; Agriculture of the future
30 May 2003 09:53:38 -0700 Kevin Eanes wrote:
(snipped) Archimedes, I can give you some figures to begin comparing the costs of standard farming methods vs. the concrete block method. First of all, I calculated that a perfectly square acre could contain a maximum of 17,528 8"x8"x16" concrete blocks, allowing a 3-foot space in between for a mower. At $1.20 per block, it would cost $21,033.60 to purchase concrete blocks for one square acre. Yes, Kevin, I believe how this is going to work best is not to make a huge initial investment of buying alot of concreteblock but to start out small and keep adding more block with future profits from the garden and farm. I envision that organic farmers will make the switch faster than anyone else. And for specialty growers such as tulips or other valuable specialities where the concrete block is more of a modified "pot". Or a pot with its bottom missing. I priced a new John Deere model 7810 150-hp row crop tractor, with no extras, at $81,707. This is a mid-level model. I live and work in a rural agricultural area and have observed that John Deere brand tractors are quite popular with the local farmers. One would have to add fuel costs, maintenance costs, and eventually the replacement cost. Kevin, the most important data for me at this moment in time is to find out if any of the 50 or more University Aggie schools have done their homework. Have done the research and found out how much grass clippings and weed clippings via a mower equals a "fair sprinkling of fertilizer". Kevin, are you privy to any data or information as to how much grass and weed mowing clippings would it take to fertilize a row of corn in perpetuity? I just have the ugly feeling that Aggie College professors are mostly salesperson proxies to the chemical and agribusiness companies and have spent the entire 20th century touting herbicides and not a single one of them researching how much grass/weed clippings is equal to artificial fertilizer application. I found your $80/acre herbicide cost to be extremely high, perhaps the farmers in question had a unique situation. Here are the annual per-acre costs for some commonly used herbicides: Yes, thanks Kevin, that $80 figure was my best attempt at recall of the plight of some NorthDakota farmers with a weed (forgotten its name -- spurge??-- don't hold me to that name). Anyway these NorthDakota farmers have a weed that costs them more in herbicides than any crop yield return. And I am guessing they make on average 60 dollars per acre on a crop return. So if the herbicide costs more than 60 dollars then those NorthDakota farmers cannot plant a crop there. But if they used the ConcreteBlock Method of farming then this weed is a welcomed sight because we get out the mower and mow it down and it becomes a fertilizer for the corn. In our method we welcome the most vigourous and fast growing weeds because they give our crops more nitrogen fertilizer. 2,4-D: $1.40/acre MCPA: $1.75/acre Roundup (glyphosate): $6.90/acre Sonalan (ethalfluralan): $9.18/acre Of course, the actual herbicide(s) would depend on the particular crop and what weed is to be killed. Interesting, and mowing the ConcreteBlock Method of farming is not the suburban style mowing but rather instead more like the mowing of alfalfa about 4 or 5 times a year. And our mowing is mowing to as close to the ground as possible and to have a mower that sprays the clippings up against the concrete block so the crop gets the most clippings. I estimate from my own acre of garden that it costs me about 10 dollars per summer to mow. So, Kevin, if Roundup costs 7 dollars per acre, then my mowing of 10 dollars per acre per summer (gasoline at 1.50 per gallon). Then herbicide application in petrol-based farming matches the price of just simply mowing your farm each year and the ConcreteBlock Method needs no fertilizer. So I solved two problems in one. By mowing I solved the need for herbicide and also solved the need for fertilizer. It was not clear to me how the use of concrete blocks would eliminate the need for pesticide. However, there are a variety of viable alternatives to the use of pesticide. The average cost per acre for pesticide (including fungicide) in the US is $24.69 per acre annually. Wow, that is a high cost. I am not clear either as to the Optimal Strategy for a Renewable pesticide program. ConcreteBlock Method faces the challenge of pests just as Petrol-Based Farming. But Petrol based farming excerbates pests with its huge fields of monocultures. Like an open invitation for swarms of insects to eat up the crop. ConcreteBlock decreases pests because in the planting their need not be a monoculture but a wide diversity of crop in the field. Also, the farmfield will be much smaller in this method. Farmers can no longer operate hundreds or thousands of acres unless they hire alot of people. A farmfield in the ConcreteBlock Method would be 20 acres or less per person farmer. So when a person tends and takes care of 20 acres, the pest problem is vastly reduced. I know of many gardens that have pests but the gardener never applies any poison pesticide. Another alleviation of pests in the ConcreteBlock Method would be to use biotech seed that is pest resistant. Renewable and Organic produce is not antagonistic to biotech GMO plants that is pest resistant. I am having difficulty quantifying the labor costs. Typical labor costs per acre under the standard agricultural cultivation method are about $340 per season. The concrete block method would be substantially more labor intensive. Perhaps you could estimate the number of labor hours required per acre and multiply by the estimated wage. Labor costs in Petrol-based farming is irrelevant because it is the petrol and tractor that is creating farms of huge size where one person can farm it all and where grain surpluses appear every year in the marketplace and why corn is 2 dollars a bushel. We need to reserve oil reserves for future generations. We need to limit human population to no more than 2 billion persons at any one time. And we need Agriculture farming that is Renewable. For purposes of brevity I have omitted the sources of the figures and the details of the calculations, however I could provide these on request. I hope the above information is helpful to you. Best regards, -Kevin Kevin, in your above you say the rows are 3 feet apart. The most important data I need at this time is how much grass/weed clippings in mowing is needed for a row of corn so that it is fertilized during the summer? I need to know if 3 feet is the proper spacing. Of course some crops such as beans need less fertilizing by clippings than does corn. I need to know if any scientists have made that knowledge available. How much grass/weed clippings equals a cupful of common fertilizer? Archimedes Plutonium, whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies |
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